• 13 Posts
  • 24 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • I’m awful for following a recipe. Unfortunately I just looked at a handful of recipes for "apricot chicken tagine"to look for the right kind of spices and the tequnique. And I think I just decided to add almonds. Here’s basically what I did, though:

    Essentially, you soak the tagine for a little while to allow it to absorb some water, and mis en place all your other ingredients. Marinate some chicken, sauté 2 med (thinly sliced) onions in a pan with some eevo until translucent and starting to brown.

    Layer the onions on the bottom of the tagine. Add marinated chicken thigh pieces, dried apricots, lightly toasted almonds, repeat, then pour a little chicken broth in so the onions don’t burn.

    Bake for 35-45 min or until the chicken is cooked through. We added some garlic slices, but they didn’t cook fast enough and were a little overpowering, so… I wouldn’t do that again. I’d add some crushed garlic to the marinade instead, next time.







  • It’s been years now, but especially started ramping up once I bought a house and had the cellar space to expand- my little appartmemt wasn’t ready to handle the collection before that. I had a bad habit of going to my local international foods markets, seeing a spice I didn’t recognize, and bringing it home to research later. Even the weird one-offs get a jar, a label, a kiss, and a place on the shelf.

    Almost all are individual spices, but I do have a handful of blends. Except for one that was a gift, they’re all homemade blends, though (taco seasoning, Donair spice, chaat masala, garam masala, lemon pepper, Japanese curry powder…).

    All my baking stuff is left in the pantry (cocoa powder, cream of tartar, BP, BS…) So they aren’t counted in with the spices. I tend to just throw together my own grill seasonings in the moment.

    Honestly, I love my collection. Aside from the fresh ing. I would need, it makes me feel like I’m capable of making literally any dish I can think of. A million flavour combinations and opportunities to be creative.











  • I made a Japanese curry with pork katsu. It was like 3 meals in one. I had to first make the 18-spice curry powder, which was mixed into a 30-min dark roux and cooled into little cubes before using them to flavour and thicken the gravy- I even added miso paste to the Katsu batter (which I thought was very clever indeed) and pan fried the cutlets (which were beat to hell) beautifully golden. Divine.

    And only after we devoured all that hard work, sitting back and surveying the damage to the kitchen, did we realize that neither of us took pictures for proof. Like it never happened at all. I have no more tears left.